TechEye

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• GCHQ agents destroyed hard drives in Guardian basement
• New Zealand politicians face snooping backlash
• DARPA plans a "cortical processor" to mimic the brain
• Intel set to speed up 14-nanometer Atoms
• Dell gives up on keyboardless Surface RT
• Tesco to bet on content with Everyday Value tablet
• Privacy group alleges Google ignores UK law

GCHQ agents destroyed hard drives in Guardian basement Posted: 20 Aug 2013 05:52 AM PDT The Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger has said  he was contacted by a senior government official, claiming to represented the views of David Cameron, that ultimately led to government agents destroying hard drives at the paper's London office. After two meetings, the official demanded the return or destruction of all whistleblowing material that was being worked on. “The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far more draconian approach,” Rusbridger wrote. Things got worse a month ago when he received a phone call from the centre of government, telling him: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." Rusbridger had further meetings with “shadowy Whitehall figures” who wanted the Snowden material back or destroyed. It became even more sinister when Rusbridger asked directly whether the government would shut down the Guardian's reporting through the courts. The official confirmed this was the government's back up plan. Rusbridger explained that the Guardian was not constrained to doing its reporting from London. Most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York and Brazil. He said that any court order would fail to stop the presses because it would only apply to the UK. However, the man called in two GCHQ security experts and they oversaw the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement. Rusbridger pointed out that the whole exercise was pointless as the data still existed and will be examined by journalists outside the UK. He warned that soon it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources, but at least it is now clear the Heathrow transit lounges are not safe places for reporters. Yesterday, David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, who has done most of the work around the NSA revelations, was held at Heathrow for nine hours without legal representation on terror charges.

New Zealand politicians face snooping backlash Posted: 20 Aug 2013 04:10 AM PDT Politicians in New Zealand are finding that their plans to mimic the UK government and spy on their citizens are going down like a dag sandwich. For a while the government thought that it would get its new surveillance laws in without much of a fight. After all, Britain and the US seemed to have managed it. But suddenly Prime Minister John Key is finding the plan extremely unpopular. There are nationwide protests and even a demonstration outside his home. According to ZDNet, Auckland town hall was actually packed with people who wanted to hear opponents to new and expanded spy powers. What must be worrying for the government is that New Zealanders rarely get out and protest about anything. When they do, such as when the Springboks toured New Zealand, things get very messy. The crusade against snooping is being led by Kim Dotcom. Vikram Kumar, the chief executive of Kim Dotcom's Mega, told the meeting that when the Telecommunications Interception Capability and Security Bill - the "TICS Bill" - becomes law, the New Zealand government plans to issue secret orders to force non-telco service providers, such as email, chat, and online voice services, to create interception capabilities for surveillance. He showed documents that proved ministerial directives will be used to "secretly impose an obligation to create interception capabilities by individually named service providers". This will all be done in secret so as not to publicly announce a lack of capability in a particular service. The plan has been already approved by the Cabinet, and is therefore official government policy. Protest actions focus on the TICS Bill and a Government Communications Services Bureau Bill. The fear is that spooks will now be able to look at legitimate internal political activism, away from foreign threats, and undermine the integrity and privacy of online communications. The government wants to use secret orders to specific service providers directing the creation of interception capability, allowing real-time access by surveillance agencies. John Key claims that he would resign if GCSB undertook mass surveillance, even if he appears to have created a system where it is made possible. The GCSB Bill will only be voted for by a majority of one in parliament and protestors hope that it will be possible to get politicians to see how unpopular they will become by voting for it.

DARPA plans a "cortical processor" to mimic the brain Posted: 20 Aug 2013 04:01 AM PDT Researchers at the USA's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency want to work out how computers can mimic a key portion of our brain. The group called for information on how it could develop systems that solve "extraordinarily difficult recognition problems in real-time". According to Network World, systems presently only offer partial solutions to this problem. They can't scale to larger, more complex datasets, and are "compute intensive, exhibit limited parallelism, and require high precision arithmetic". DARPA wants to mimic the neocortex which is used in higher brain functions such as sensory perception, motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought and language. The idea is to develop a "Cortical Processor" based on Hierarchical Temporal Memory. Its "call for information" said that computing was at a point where some basic algorithmic principles had been spotted and merged into machine learning and neural network techniques. These algorithms were inspired by neural models, in particular neocortex, and can recognise complex spatial and temporal patterns and can adapt to changing environments. DARPA added that the cortical computational model should be fault tolerant to gaps in data, massively parallel, extremely power efficient, and highly scalable. It should also have minimal arithmetic precision requirements, and allow ultra-dense, low power implementations. Overall, the new RFI will be part of the research and development DARPA has been doing to a computer with similar form and function to the mammalian brain. Such artificial brains would be used to build robots whose intelligence matches that of mice and cats, DARPA says.

Intel set to speed up 14-nanometer Atoms Posted: 20 Aug 2013 03:46 AM PDT Intel is set to announce a speeded up release date for its 14-nanometer Atom chips. Barrons reports Chipzilla will announce the date nearly six months ahead of its previous roadmaps. At the moment the mobile market is controlled by licensees of ARM which has little to answer a 14-nanometer challenge. The 14 nm chips will be smaller and more efficient, it is promised. Stage one for Intel is to get its 22-nanometer Atom chips in the shops, which is expected by the end of the year. Then Intel bring out its still-faster 14-nanometer designs, roughly by Q2 2014. Barron's deepthroat at Intel says the company is likely to announce a schedule at IDF that would significantly trim the inevitable one-year lag for boosting the Atom chip to the next level in speed. This means that Atoms will go into 14-nanometer production just six months after the Core chips. The 22-nanometer Atom chips probably are about at parity with ARM-based chips in delivering the same performance at comparable power levels. But 14nm threatens to give ARM a canning if Intel can get it into the shops early enough. It will move Atom so that it has a power advantage over ARM. The announcement at IDF might even come with disclosure of specific dates on which production of the 14-nanometer Core and Atom chips will begin.

Dell gives up on keyboardless Surface RT Posted: 20 Aug 2013 03:43 AM PDT Dell has stopped selling its version of the Windows RT tablet which lacks a keyboard. On Friday you could pick one of these up for US$299. But this week the cheapest tablet came bundled with a keyboard for $479. In a purge at its website, all the options for a standalone tablet had gone. According to IT World, Dell has been lowering prices for its Windows RT tablet since May. Needless to say it is because the tablet has not exactly been selling like hot cakes. The XPS 10 was priced at $499 last year and had dropped to $299 in May.  It also indicates that Dell has seen the writing on the wall when it comes to tablets. Tablet sales are not about hardware, they are about creating content rather than just consuming it, so a keyboard could be the way forward. But RT as a platform in general is on the ropes. Keyboards are expensive as a tablet accessory and can be more profitable for Dell than the tablet itself.

Tesco to bet on content with Everyday Value tablet Posted: 19 Aug 2013 09:30 AM PDT British supermarket mega-chain Tesco is planning to enter the hardware space with its own tablet. Details are thin at the moment, but it is understood Tesco wants to take advantage of its heavy customer base to sell on digital content through its own branded hardware. In doing so, it will directly compete with the likes of Amazon and Apple with its own "iPad-like" tablet. Tesco's tablet is expected to be sold at a budget friendly £100, the Sunday Times reports, with Tesco's Blinkbox content delivery platform pre-installed. The company will hope this sees it increase its presence in content streaming, challenging existing companies like Netflix and Amazon's Lovefilm. Content is notoriously tricky to sell because of regional restrictions that differ between networks and the countries they are being sold in. But it sounds like Tesco thinks, if it takes a hit with hardware, it will be able to entice customers into paying for Blinkbox. The founder of business and IT analyst house Quocirca, Clive Longbottom, told TechEye that, essentially, a Tesco tablet will be a means to an end. "It will be the vehicle for extending the presence of Blinkbox, and Tesco will go heavily for it as a hub for all sorts of media," Longbottom said, "so expect Blinkbox to include more songs and to include books as well".   "I'd be surprised if it is not Android based so as to make the most of the apps store," he said. "The big question is whether Tesco will go for a very shiny top spec and sell at a loss to make money on content, or a bare bones one where it won't have to sell much on top". Tesco recently said it will be stepping away from selling consumer electronics - but perhaps it meant electronics that are not its own.

Privacy group alleges Google ignores UK law Posted: 19 Aug 2013 08:39 AM PDT A campaign group, Safari Users Against Google's Secret Tracking, claims to have seen legal documents filed by Google where the company declares itself exempt from UK privacy laws. Google, the group said, would not accept service of the lawsuit in the UK - meaning the group would have to take the fight to California. The claim makes note of Google openly saying tracking cookings were installed on PCs and mobiles when people used Apple's Safari browser, even after users had chosen to block them - letting the company track the browsing habits of Safari users without their consent. In the US, Google paid a $22.5 million settlement to the FTC, when the company was caught out by a law student and security researcher. A claimant in Britain, Marc Bradshaw, said in a statement: "It seems to us absurd to suggest that consumers can't bring a claim against a company which is operating in the UK and is even constructing a $1 billion headquarters in London". "If consumers can't bring a civil claim against a country where it operates, the only way of ensuring it behaves is by having a robust regulator," Bradshaw said. He pointed out that the ICO will only fine Google if it breaks the law but "Google clearly doesn't think that it is bound by that law," Bradshaw said. "Fines would be useless because Google earns more than the maximum fine in less than two hours," Bradshaw continued. "With no restraint Google is free to continue to invade our privacy whether we like it or not". Law firm Olswang, representing the claimants, wrote a letter to the ICO proposing alternative sanctions - as the fines will only be a drop in the ocean for Google. The firm proposed plain English warnings on Google's search home page about how it collects and tracks data, reversing Google's merger of data across all services, and placing a prominent apology on Google's search home page. Olswang's Dan Tench said the ICO's response was dismissive, but that a "leading QC" disagrees and "has advised that the Information Commissioner does have stronger powers". "We note that France's regulator, CNIL, has been more robust," Tench said, "announcing a final ultimatum to Google to ensure quickly that its privacy policy complies with European law". Last week, the US' Consumer Watchdog said Google had openly acknowledged that users of the Gmail service could not expect "legitimate" privacy with regards to their information and third parties. When questioned about this, an ICO spokesperson said, responding to TechEye: "We have an ongoing investigation into whether Google's privacy policy complies with the UK Data Protection Act. We have raised concerns with Google that its existing policy does not provide sufficient information to enable UK users of its services to understand how their data is being used. "Failure to take the necessary action to improve the policies compliance with the Data Protection Act by 20 September will leave the company open to the possibility of formal enforcement action."

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